Boosting your productivity in the modern professional world is a tough struggle. Yet, thankfully there is a wide range of tools to help optimize your workflow, and keep your focused on your projects. On top of this, many of these tools can help provide a workspace for collaboration and communication between your colleagues.
Two programs that excel in this area are Todoist, and Trello, who have risen in popularity significantly over the past half a decade. Today we’ll be exploring both of these in-depth, and seeing which one is best suited to helping boost your productivity.
What is Todoist?
Todoist, named after a To-Do-List, is a complete workflow manager that can be used to track your personal progress, and provide a workspace for project management. Built on a foundation of organization and workflow optimization.
What is Trello?
Trello is a Kanban based project management, and productivity tool that is widely used all over the internet today. Created around a minimalist card system, Trello provides a minimalist approach to keeping yourself, and your team, organized and productive.
Todoist Pros
Todoist is one of the most highly rated software solutions to productivity and project management, having many key benefits under its belt. Let’s explore some of the key pros that Todoist has become known for:
Highly Customizable Interface
Todoist has an incredibly flexible, and adaptive interface design. Allowing the user to scale the complexity of its UI to meet their personal standards. Whilst other platforms struggle to bend in this regard, either sitting heavily on the complex, or simple UI design choice, Todoist manages to reach a balance that is not often seen in these programs.
The program is both an incredibly simple, and complex, platform at the same time. Providing unparalleled control into the hands of its users. Very impressive.
Comprehensive Task Tracking Integration
With a program named Todoist, it should come as no surprise that the platform excels at keeping track of your tasks. With a wide range of project, task, and deadline tracking. As well as a comprehensive roadmap feature that allows you to project your productivity forward.
Todoist is Supported, and Syncs, Across Multiple Platforms
Todoist is available across all platforms, providing iOS and Android apps, as well as full desktop support on any OS that can use a web browser. Furthermore, all of these will sync between themselves. Allowing you to work seamlessly between platforms with ease.
Wide Range of Integrations
Todoist has a wide range of integration options for you to take advantage of. Including many Google apps, Evernote, Zoom, Slack, Zapier, and even Trello! Just to name a few. Providing a great foundation of support for people looking to expand their Todoist workspace.
Trello Pros
Trello is a widely used, and undoubtedly popular project management and organizational tool. Sporting a wide range of well-known benefits for its users. Let’s take a closer look at many of the pros that Trello has to offer:
Extensive Free Plan – Honest Pricing Structure
Trello provides one of the most extensive free plans available. With a pricing structure that doesn’t work to punish its dedicated users. With the free version, you’ll have access to all of Trello’s features, as well as an unlimited number of users, boards, cards, and lists.
Their paid model includes the Business Class and Trello Gold Members, which cost $25 per month. Designed primarily for business applications, this model opens up bulk exporting, a higher attachment data cap, and more functionality for administrator users to access and manage all of their boards at once.
The free version, however, will cover almost all of your needs. Even for small teams. Making Trello one of the highest value free project management platforms out there today.
Allows You to Understand Instantly When A Deadline Nears
Trello operates on a ‘Card’ system, which means all of your projects are housed within cards. This minimalist approach to project management allows you to easily keep track of your workflow, and approaching deadlines.
When you create a card, you add a deadline to that card. When the deadline draws near, the card will turn yellow. When the deadline passes, it will turn red. Only being removed once the task is marked as complete.
This provides a great ‘At-a-glance’ method of staying on top of your work, and the work of your team.
Well Made Mobile App
Trello comes with a surprisingly well made mobile and tablet app, available both in the iOS and Android storefront. This app comes with its own UI design, and is extremely easy to use, much akin to the rest of the Trello platform.
This allows you to easily keep track of your project management on the go, and even edit, change, and create new cards whilst not in front of your computer. This also provides enough support to ensure anybody you’re working with can use the Trello platform, regardless of their own hardware.
Trello follows the Kanban system
The Kanban system was created by Toyota in the 1950s, with the intention to boost productivity and reveal bottlenecks in the workflow. Trello is built on this Kanban foundation, which has become one of the most popular project management, and productivity methods of the professional world.
An Extensive Notification System
Trello has a useful notification system built into the very core of its design. Providing updates through email, and even text message, when certain metrics are met. Such as tasks being completed, overdue, or are drawing near.
This helps to keep on top of your project management, even when you don’t have the platform open. Meaning you’ll never miss a detail!
Simple and Effective UI Design
Trello is built with a minimalist approach to its UI design, and this is a huge bonus. It makes the platform easy to understand, and begin working with. Cutting out much of the frustrating beginner work that is often involved in using a new platform.
The features of Trello are easy to understand, and quick to master. Allowing you to focus on what’s important, the work.
Todoist Cons
Whilst Todoist is extremely popular, it does not come without its drawbacks. As no piece of software is truly perfect. Let’s take a look at many of the drawbacks of the Todoist software:
Lacks A Calendar View
One of the most perplexing issues with Todoist is an absence of a calendar in its native platform. For a program that is designed to keep track of your projects, and productivity, you’d expect a calendar to be included. Thankfully Todoist does sync with other calendar apps, meaning you can bypass this issue with a third-party solution.
Poorly Optimized Windows 10 App
Whilst many users will use Todoist through their browser, or the Todoist app, there is a problem when it comes to the app provided for Windows 10 users, found in the Windows store.
This app is incredibly poorly optimized, missing several features, and will often freeze on lower end computers. There just hasn’t been as much love and care provided to the Windows 10 app as the rest of the platform.
Limited Collaboration Functions
The collaboration functions of Todoist are quite limited. Providing only the most basic features that you’d expect out of a Google Doc or other likewise software. For a platform that is designed to help teams collaborate, you’ll find yourself frustrated with how often you need to use third-party integrations to get a proper collaborative experience.
Poor Quality Free Version
Whilst Todoist does provide a free version, it is extremely limited in nature. Compared to many other free options on the market, you’ll find yourself deeply hamstrung by the nature of Todoist’s free offerings.
You’re basically limited to a ‘To-Do-List’ and that’s it, with the rest of the platform’s features dangling just out of reach. This includes labels, comments, filters, and file uploads. All important core features for a productivity platform of this nature.
Task Limit
Each project created with Todoist has a limit of 300, which may appear to be an ample offering in most instances, yet for more complex projects this can become a serious limiter. This is even an issue on the paid version, so is a huge shortcoming of the platform overall.
Trello Cons
Trello is a highly praised piece of software to keep you focused, organized, and productive. However, the platform does come with some drawbacks. Let’s explore some of the cons to the Trello platform:
No Offline Access
Trello is primarily designed as an all-in-one solution for your project management, and productivity needs. However, one important weak point of the platform is the lack of offline viewing. Meaning you will always require internet access to stay in touch with your Trello board.
This is not a huge issue, and the internet is not something we often find ourselves without. However, in the event of your internet going down, you may be seriously limited in your ability to keep in touch with your project management commitments.
Difficult to Handle Large Projects
Trello is defined by one large pitfall, and it’s the platform’s ability to handle large projects. Due to the foundation that Trello is designed on, which is the Kanban system, tracking large amounts of information can be difficult. With the card system at the very core of the platform, it can struggle to keep up with more complex project details, and extensive project management requirements.
So, whilst Trello excels at small project and productivity management, you will soon grow frustrated when it is applied to a larger project environment.
No Road-Map Feature
Road mapping is a core professional tool and is vital to many project management platforms. Yet, surprisingly, Trello comes with no road map feature in its native platform. Meaning you’ll have to go off-site to create even a simple roadmap for your project.
No Comment Editing
One annoying drawback of the card system, which is a strong point of the platform, is that comments are surprisingly limited. If you create a card, and write out the comment, you are now stuck with that comment. If you wish to edit it, you’ll have to recreate the entire card from scratch.
Whilst this can be quickly copied and pasted, with your edit included, it does create a tedious element to managing minor errors in the Kanban card system.
Trello Has A Storage Limit
Trello has some surprisingly restrictive storage limits to its platform, so much so that you’ll find yourself hamstrung with certain project types. For free users, you can only upload a 10MB file for each attachment. This limitation is somewhat lifted with the paid version, where Business Class and Trello Gold users are able to upload up to 250MB per attachment.
However, these upload limits are almost unusable for many project types. Such as game development, software development, engineering, and much more. Forcing you to move off-site for storage solutions to get around this limitation.
Advantages That Todoist Has Over Trello?
Todoist has a few key advantages over Trello. Let’s explore some of them here:
More Customizable Interface
Compared to Trello, Todoist provides a much more flexible interface for users. Allowing you to tailor the program to your specific needs. Where Trello fits a very strict mould, Todoist will at least flex a little to meet a wider range of project management, and productivity applications.
Better Task Tracking
Todoist, not so surprisingly, has a much more comprehensive task tracking system baked into its native platform. Allowing you to keep a closer eye, and better control, over the progress and status of your projects.
Extensive Integrations Compared to Trello
Todoist has an extremely long list of off-site integrations, which is a huge benefit over the Trello platform. This means that many of the shortcomings of the platform can be worked around using their off-site support, and makes Todoist much more adaptive to unique industry requirements.
Advantages That Trello Has Over Todoist?
Trello provides a few key advantages over Todoist. Let’s explore some of them here:
Much Better Free Plan Offering
Trello has one of the most generous free plans on the market, and completely blows Todoist out of the water in this regard. Trello, for small teams, can be used by almost completely free forever. Without you ever feeling the need to invest into the Business Class or Trello Gold options.
Highly Quality Apps
The Trello apps found on iOS, Android, and Windows are much more well made than the Todoist apps. Not only do they come with their own responsive UI solutions, but also are extremely well optimized. Meaning they will run on a wide range of devices. Compared to the Todoist apps that have a long list of optimizations, and functionality issues.
Easier to Use
Trello is a much easier platform to understand, and use, right off the bat. Requiring almost no previous understanding of the Kanban system, of even productivity and project management platforms to make the most out of Trello.
Who Should Use Todoist?
Todoist is best suited for larger teams, or small teams who have very specific industry requirements. Meaning you’ll need to take advantage of the off-site integrations that the platform provides.
Who Should Use Trello?
Trello is best suited to those who are either looking for a solo project management, or productivity platform, or small teams who need to pass simple information between each other. What Trello lacks in complexity; it makes up for in streamlined efficiency.
Which is Better for Project Management?
This is a difficult one to answer, as both platforms will suit themselves better to different project management contexts. However, Todoist will win out for most extensive features and integrations. Whilst Trello will win out with ease of use, and minimalistic approach.
Which is Better for Note Taking?
Todoist wins this one hands down. Providing a much better platform for note taking, and more extensive methods of keeping track of your notes in general. Whilst Trello could be used in this regard, it will quickly become bothersome.
Which is Better for Collaboration?
Despite its simplistic nature, Trello wins this one. Many features in the Todoist platform get in the way of easy collaboration, whilst Trello will connect you with your team and have you all on the same page in minutes.
Pricing: Asana vs Trello
Asana Pricing
- FREE plan (Basic)
- Premium 10.99$
- Business 24.99$
- Enterprise (custom)
Trello Pricing
- FREE plan (Basic)
- Trello Gold 5$
Conclusion
Both Todoist and Trello have become popular for good reason. They provide incredible support for project management, and productivity needs in a wide range of professional and personal applications. It’s no surprise that both of these platforms now sport some of the largest user bases in the project management, and productivity software fields.
Todoist has an impressive resume of flexible and industry wide integration. Making it a great platform for those looking to tailor their project management platforms to meet their unique industry requirements.
Whilst Trello provides a tried-and-true favourite of the project management world. Resting on the strong foundation of the Kanban system, with an expertly designed user interface, and an incredibly high level of usability. The kind of platform that any users, regardless of computer aptitude, could take advantage of.
Want to read more about Notion and other tools like Trello, Asana, OneNote, Basecamp…?
Have a look at our Notion “vs” software reviews here:
